In part 1, we provided a definition of cloud computing and talked about the difference between public and private clouds. In this post, we’ll look at the relationship between cloud services and data centers.
The growth in the demand for cloud services has been facilitated by the growth in the data center marketplace. Demand for colocation, hosting and value-added services continues to grow as the adoption of cloud-based applications increase. Quite simply, the cloud is a network of servers that can be accessed remotely by personal computers, mobile devices, and applications. The servers sit in a data center somewhere, or even multiple data centers scattered throughout the world.
Colocation data centers make the benefits of cloud computing most viable. These benefits include helping IT organizations cut costs, rapidly scale and maintain the integrity of their “always on” applications. Enterprises have realized the benefits of housing their IT infrastructure in colocation facilities that also provide access to cloud and other managed services. Hybrid cloud deployments are becoming the norm in the industry as organizations prefer to maintain a core of dedicated corporate infrastructure with scalable access to cloud services for temporary or transitional needs.
A successful cloud deployment requires 100% server and network uptime. Scalability, availability, resiliency, and security are all features that must be incorporated into data centers that want to differentiate themselves. Facilities that are best equipped to handle the explosion of the cloud are located in safe geographic locations (and have incorporated features into the design of the data center to mitigate potential disaster risks), provide carrier-neutral connectivity and maintain highly redundant critical infrastructure.
Most businesses are looking to access the benefits of the cloud. But without choosing the right data center, grasping those benefits can be challenging. As a result, availability, connectivity, location and scalability of the data center can make or break a business’ cloud success.